Silicon Valley Embraces April Fools
Written by Ben Koo   
Wednesday, 02 April 2008 00:50
I saw or heard about a lot of interesting April Fools jokes. ESPN pulled a good once on its viewers with a fake breaking news story that Davidson was still in the NCAA tourney and that the last 20 seconds of the Elite 8 game would have to be replayed. Peter Fuitak at collegefootballnews.com had me slightly convinced that Hershel Walker was coming back to college football. A pretty bold risque prank call was documented on a message board I frequent. "dad, i just got a call from this girl named Stephanie that i met on spring break... we met at a bar, got drunk and did the spring break business... she called me yesterday stating she is pregnant but she does not know if its mine or not because she has a boyfriend back home" However what really suprised me was the tech industry and in particular Silicon Valley's participation in the April Fool's festivities. Below are some highlights. - Google led the way with a couple interesting pranks, the most ridiculous below. Funny but its better if you know someone dumb enough to believe it [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmSdy_9blB4&hl=en&fs=1] Google followed this shaninigan with a fake micro site claiming Gmail users could now back date emails. picture-1.png -Google owned Youtube continued the Internet phenomena that is Rick Rolling. Rick Rolling has two different forms. 1) When a publication or website puts up a link promising something interesting but rather redirecting you to the video below. 2) Blasting the song "Never Let You Down" to protest formal gatherings (Scientology meetups have been rick rolled several times. All the links on Youtube's homepage today directed them to the video below, with many other sites joining in on the fun. In fact the music video below has now tallied 8 million views/ Rick Rolls with duplicate videos talling multi millions of views. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=adksENb9yBM&hl=en&fs=1] - Technology publication ZD Net ran a fictitious story that ICANN was going to shutdown the internet for an hour for research purposes. - San Francisco based Wikipedia made fictitious entries for their "On This Day" and "Today's Featured Article section" - InfoWorld published a pair of great fake stories. 1) Google buys facebook 2) Yahoo and Microsoft agree to merge. Both articles laid on the sarcasm pretty thick.

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